ABSTRACT
The dockless e-scooter sharing service is rapidly spreading, replacing existing transportation, and improving last-mile accessibility. User segmentation with travel regularity and segment-level behavior analysis, which are already conducted in public transit, also benefits e-scooter sharing service to enhance service quality and increase usage. In this work, we group e-scooter users according to their travel regularity and identify each group's usage characteristics. Through the dockless e-scooter usage data, as operated in six cities in South Korea, travel regularity measured by users' repetitive departure time and destination is discovered and spatiotemporal usage patterns are identified. We divide e-scooter users into three groups by type of travel regularity: irregular user, spatially regular user, and regular user. Regular users more frequently use e-scooters, travel shorter distances, and walk longer distances to find an e-scooter than other groups. It is also revealed that the use in morning peak hours only occurs in the regular user group. By decomposing the temporal patterns of spatially regular and regular users, we discover that spatially regular users are composed of daytime, evening peak, and nighttime users. In contrast, regular users are composed of morning peak, evening peak, and lockdown (restriction in response to COVID-19 pandemic) peak users. This research suggests user segmentation based on travel regularity in e-scooter sharing services, enabling multiple strategies to be drawn to retain users with high regularity and convert users with low regularity to regular users.
ABSTRACT
Public bike-sharing systems (PBSS) allow the use of shared bicycles for a period of time without owning them. In Buenos Aires and Madrid, PBSS were implemented in 2010 and 2014 respectively, managed by public authorities and oriented to find alternatives to mass transit. The advantages offered by PBSS are multiple, and socially and environmentally friendly. The purpose of this article is to conduct an exploration and analysis of the temporal and spatial pattern of trips made using PBSS for both cities before and during the COVID 19 pandemic, in order to contribute to the state of the art. The temporal and spatial patterns in both cities were similar in pre-pandemic times. Both systems were negatively impacted in 2020 in terms of the number of trips due to lockdowns imposed. Both PBSS were closed during the pandemic, but as they were relaunched, bike usage increased. In both cities there is a correlation between the level of supply and the use of the system, and new micromobility spaces were identified. It is relevant to consider the lack of available datasets as well as information processing capabilities.
ABSTRACT
Bike sharing can leverage its physical distancing advantages for responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, but system management and communication are essential to support healthy transportation. This study addresses the need to understand the range of bike share systems' responses to the pandemic by reviewing bike share system cases in the United States and reports survey responses from bike share users in San Antonio (TX). Five out of eleven bike share systems communicated their responses to the pandemic online at the time of review. 43% of survey respondents who were unemployed due to the pandemic reported increasing use of the bike share system, whereas 36% of employed respondents decreased ridership. Most respondents were unaware of the bike share operator's steps to control the spread of COVID-19 for users. Moderate-frequency riders (1-2 times per month) may increase bike sharing the most after Coronavirus restrictions are lifted, from 22% of respondents to 34%. Based on our findings, we suggest bike share operators should expand communication efforts about policies and actions to support community health, explore how to serve unemployed and low-income communities best, and prepare for the equitable expansion of ridership following the pandemic.
ABSTRACT
As urban transportation systems often face disruptive events, including natural and man-made disasters, the importance of resilience in the transportation sector has recently been on the rise. In particular, the worldwide spread of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a significant decrease in citizens' public transit use to avoid unnecessary physical contact with others. Accordingly, bike-share has been highlighted as one of the sustainable modes that can replace public transit and, thus, improve the overall resilience of the urban transportation systems in response to COVID-19. This study aims to examine the changes in causal relationships between bike-share and public transit throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Seoul, Korea. We analyzed bike-share and public transit ridership from Jan 2018 to Dec 2020. We developed a weekly panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model to identify the bike-transit relationships before and after the pandemic. Our results showed that COVID-19 weakens the competitive relationships between bike-share and bus transit and modal integration between bike-share and subway transit. This study also found that bus and subway transit were more competitive with each other after the outbreak of COVID-19. The study's findings suggest that bike-share can increase the overall resilience of the urban transportation system during the pandemic situation, particularly for those who rely on public transit for their mobility.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the frequency of tourists using shared bicycles to a certain extent. This paper uses the cycling data of Boston, USA from June 2020 to December 2020, taking users in areas without bicycle sites as tourists. Using customers and subscribers among tourists to share bicycle trip data on a daily basis, taking into account the weather, the built environment of bicycle sites, and the number of COVID-19 cases per week, a negative binomial regression model is used to explore these factors during the epidemic. The relationship between regional customers and subscribers using shared bicycle trips and influencing factors. The results show that, first of all, during the pandemic, there is a double-peak tide phenomenon in the usage of shared bicycles by subscribers among tourists, and customers use more in the evening peak. Secondly, the population density and employment density around bicycle sites have a significant positive impact on the shared bicycle use of customers and subscribers. For every 1% increase in the population, subscriber usage increases by 4.55%, and every 1 % increase in employment Density, customer usage increased by 4.22 %. In addition, the number of bus stations and subway stations has a restraining effect on the use of shared bicycles. Finally, the number of epidemics will increase the usage of customers and subscribers to a certain extent, with subscribers increasing by 0.25% and customer usage increasing by 2.92 %. The research results can timely analyze the usage of bicycles shared by different users among tourists during the pandemic, and can help transportation agencies adjust services in different regions to better control the spread of the virus. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The emergence of micromobility as a sustainable and inclusive alternative to conventional motorized modes has gained particular importance as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. The aim of the article is to study the profile of the users of these means of transport and how the pandemic has modified their trips, contributing to the incipient research in this area. The study offers an approach to these new forms of mobility in Barcelona, using the first survey carried out in the city on users of electric scooters, shared conventional and electric bicycles, and shared electric motorcycle (n = 902). The presented analysis indicates that the most frequent users are young, employed men. The reasons for travel are diverse, although they vary depending on the vehicle. The results also indicate that almost a third of micromobility users changed their usual transport mode due to the pandemic, especially those who previously travelled by public transport or walking. The potential of micromobility to reduce emissions is questioned and social implications are pointed out, both due to the differentiated use based on sociodemographic characteristics, and to the impact on health and public space.
ABSTRACT
Recent months have seen ever-increasing levels of confirmed COVID-19 cases despite the accelerated adoption of vaccines. In the wake of the pandemic, travel patterns of individuals change as well. Understanding the changes in biking behaviors during evolving COVID-19 situations is a primary goal of this paper. It investigated usage patterns of the bike-share system in Singapore before, during, and after local authorities imposed lockdown measures. It also correlated the centrality attributes of biking mobility networks of different timestamps with land-use conditions. The results show that total ridership surprisingly climbed by 150% during the lockdown, compared with the pre-pandemic level. Biking mobility graphs became more locally clustered and polycentric as the epidemic develop. There existed a positive and sustained spatial autocorrelation between centrality measures and regions with high residential densities or levels of the land-use mixture. This study suggests that bike-share systems may serve as an alternative mode to fulfill mobility needs when public transit services are restricted due to lockdown policies. Shared-micromobility services have the potential to facilitate a disease-resilient transport system as societies may have to coexist with COVID in the future.